RNA – Speaking during one of a series of lectures at the Islamic Propagation Office of the Islamic Seminary of Qom, Ayatollah Mohiyeddin Haeri-Shirazi referred to the words of Imam Khomeini and one of the reasons for the despair and problems in the West is that Islam and the value of humanity are not understood correctly, and said that this the most critical challenge that they face.
“In the West, man is weak and deprived but in Islam, man is dignified and valued. It is our mission to explain Islam in the humanity courses in universities in Western countries because if we explain the content of Islam to the people of the West, they will be attracted toward Islam,” he said.
The teacher in the Islamic Seminary said that the current era is an era of open-mindedness and added that the people of this era are committed to learning knowledge and science and the beliefs of Islam are based on science of the humanities and if a society wills, it will accept Islam.
Referring to the Western justice system, which believes that punishing the guilty cannot change anything and have abolished the death penalty, Ayatollah Haeri-Shirazi said that Western leaders have pressed Turkey to abolish the death penalty as one of the conditions if they want to join the European Union.
His Eminence said that in Western thinking, human values are not a fixed system and these values change due to changing environmental conditions and are relative and if the environment and conditions change, people will change.
The former member of the Assembly of Experts added that the output of this thinking is that the West said, “We will create Israel in the Middle East and it is possible that there will be protests at first, but sooner or later the people of Palestine and the Muslims of the region will be accustomed to Israel and accept it.”
Ayatollah Haeri-Shirazi said that atheists say that man is not a creation of God but rather that God was created by man in order to seek refuge from their problem. “Atheists consider their beliefs as based on science and that the belief in God is superstition but we see that when the Soviet Union, which imposed atheism on the people, collapsed after seventy years, the people went back to the mosques and the churches,” he said.
His Eminence pointed out that the West says that conditions change and perspectives change but experience shows that the changing the conditions does not change mankind. “Islam also says that man rules over his conditions and must manage this conditions and choose the correct path,” the Iranian cleric said.
Ayatollah Haeri-Shirazi stressed that from the perspective of Islam, man is dominant over his environment and conditions and one of the blessings of Islam is that blessing which helps mankind to recognize his lofty values and said that it is this recognition prevents mankind from engaging in sins and crimes.
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